Dear P. Tuccella and co-authors,

As you may know, one of the original reviewers had requested that they have a chance to read and comment on your revised manuscript. Having received their second review, I can now recommend that your revised manuscript is published in GMD, once you take the minor comments from their review into account.

Regards and thanks again for considering GMD,
Fiona O'Connor

Comments from Reviewer:

The revised paper is a much improved compared to the first version. I just have a few minor editorial comments and one suggestion of this manuscript.

Page 22, line 10: The size distribution is very important for CCN, thus I agree with the statement regarding the lognormal modes. But it is not just about the primary emissions – secondary processes have a large role on size distribution. I think the issue of simulated size distribution, which is not evaluated in this study, is an important point and warrants mention in the conclusions. I just have one other comment that does not have to be done for this paper. The authors could test this hypothesis by changing the size distribution to better fit the observed size distribution and then compute CCN. If CCN improves, which I suspect it would, then

Page 23, line 23: “aerosol is only aware about liquid clouds” is awkward. Suggest changing to “accounts for aerosols only within liquid clouds,”

Page 24, line 8: change “Nord” to “North”.

Page 29, line 8: Change “performances” to “performance” and ”were” to “was”. It is awkward to have plural for performance since I think of it as the overall assessment of the model rather than individual metrics.

Page 31, line 1: Change “CCN load” to “CCN concentrations”.

Dear P. Tuccella and co-authors,

Thank you for revising the manuscript following the second review by Reviewer 1. I also note the following:

1. Pg4, Introduction, line9/10
Reviewer 2 requested that you be specific that the radiative forcing that
you refer to is the result of changes in aerosols resulting from changes
in anthropogenic emissions since pre-industrial times.

I don't think you have fully addressed this reviewer's comment in the
revised manuscript. In particular, you don't mention changing emissions and
you refer to the global "median" radiative forcing as opposed to the "global
mean radiative forcing". Can you please change it to the following:
"The global mean radiative forcing associated due to aerosols, as a result
of changes in anthropogenic emissions since pre-industrial times, is highly
uncertain and is estimated to be -0.9 W/m2, with an uncertainty range of
-1.9 W/m2 to -0.1 W/m2 (Boucher et al., 2013)."

Otherwise, you have adequately addressed the reviewers' comments and I recommend that your revised manuscript be published in GMD.

Regards,
Fiona O'Connor